Through April 18, 1953
UNITED STATES
Army Tests Atomic Artillery To Complete Atomic Arsenal
New York Times, March 24, 1953.—The second of this spring’s series of “diagnostic” atomic tests is scheduled to be held today at the Nevada Proving Grounds of the Atomic Energy Commission.
About forty nuclear devices will have been detonated after today’s test. The United States will have set off thirty-six of them, the Russians at least three, the British one.
These figures probably provide a fairly, though not completely, accurate yardstick of our advantage in the atomic arms race.
The United States now has a complete arsenal of atomic weapons. By utilizing cores of various sizes of fissionable material in casings of varying sizes, and by timing the burst to explode anywhere from 3,000 feet in the air to below ground level all sorts of different effects of heat, blast and radioactivity can be produced.
The Army’s new 280 mm. atomic projectile, fired from a conventional heavy artillery piece, is one of the new weapons to be tested in Nevada during the current series of explosions. The diameter of the casing of this atomic weapon, about eleven inches, contrasts with the original size of the atomic bomb used against Japan—a tremendous cylinder, which could be crammed, only with difficulty, into the modified bomb bay of a B-29.
Weapons Range in Power
The artillery projectile will probably produce a relatively small “yield” in explosive force, considerably less than the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT, which was the yield of the Hiroshima bomb.
Today’s atomic weapons range in power from the smallest type tactical arms, with an explosive force of perhaps 2,000 tons of TNT to the terrible blast of the newest hydrogen device, which produced more than 1,000,000 tons of explosive force.
What this means to mankind, and warfare, is not yet fully clear, but it is certain that atomic weapons have not, and cannot, in the foreseeable future, replace all conventional arms.
Used tactically, that is on the field of battle against opposing enemy forces, atomic weapons have great importance but serious limitations. Last week’s Nevada test, for instance, demonstrated that a 15,000-ton atomic device, detonated 300 feet from the ground, has definitely localized effects and that troops well dug in perhaps 1,800 yards from the blast, would have been safe.
The shock, blast and heat effect of the weapon must be quickly followed up by attacking troops if the demoralization and saturation factor—which is such an important part of atomic warfare—is not to be wasted.
Ideal for Tank Attack
The situation last week would have presented an ideal tactical one for a massed armored attack. Tanks in great numbers moving directly toward ground zero, but taking care to avoid the path of radioactive “fall-out,” would have been hidden by the dust cloud and probably could have overrun and penetrated the enemy front before he had time to reorganize.
The radioactivity, though high at points, would not have been sufficient to endanger seriously the lives of the attackers, and armor would provide some immunity.
Though atomic weapons used tactically are not, alone, an absolute weapon, their strategic counterparts, the big “city-busters,” which produce anywhere from 80,000 tons of TNT explosive force upward to 1,000,000 or more, pose such frightful problems that no one can predict the consequences if they are ever used freely in a full-scale atomic war.
Dr. R. E. Lapp, atomic physicist, in his new book, “The New Force,” estimates that a one-megaton (1,000,000 ton) hydrogen bomb would cause “heavy devastation to sixty square miles of area, and moderate damage to 110 square miles.”
Military Sea Service Under Attack for Competition with Private Lines
New York Times, March 27, 1953.—The Military Sea Transportation Service, the ocean hauling agency of the armed forces, came under fire yesterday from private shipping interests and Congressional leaders.
One of the biggest shipping operators in the world, the agency has been criticized in the past for its heavy accumulation of tonnage and for the increasing competition it offers private shipping owners of this country in periods of commercial cargo shortages.
Thirty American operators of tramp shipping met yesterday at the Maritime Exchange, 80 Broad Street, to complete formation of the American Tramp Shipowners Association, Inc., and to adopt a constitution and elect officers.
One of the first orders of business, according to F. Riker Clark, who was elected president, was to send a telegram to Charles H. McGuire, director of the National Shipping Authority, urging tighter protection for private shipping interests in the chartering of Government-owned authority vessels to the Military Sea Transportation Service. The service is now receiving a number of Federal ships coming out of lay-up status for emergency military uses.
20 More Vessels Asked
Recently it asked Mr. McGuire’s organization, an emergency agency functioning within the Department of Commerce, for the reactivation of a fleet of twenty more ships. Seven Victory ships have been ordered out of lay-up status to meet this request and additional vessels will be made available over the next few months, the authority announced yesterday.
The military service itself announced yesterday that it had signed charters for twenty-four merchant vessels.
These included Liberty-type ships at a new high rate of $1,800 a day, on a time-charter basis, and one C-4-type carrier, the Hawaiian, for four months at $2,800 a day.
While the chartering of private tonnage obviously aids the shipping industry, maritime leaders are nevertheless concerned because they feel that much of the overseas cargoes for which the military agency must assign tonnage, either private or public, could be handled by private shipping.
The telegram to Mr. McGuire asked that ships now being withdrawn from lay-up status be returned to reserve as soon as they have served the emergency needs, or as soon as private tonnage becomes available.
“Hampering” Charged
In Washington Representative John H. Ray, Republican of New York, introduced yesterday a resolution which, if adopted, Would place Congress on record as believing that the fostering of a strong and independently operated merchant marine was being “hampered and restricted by undue and unfair competition from Government operations, and by the failure of the nation to adopt an adequate merchant marine policy.”
It was understood that Mr. Ray acted with the approval of a number of fellow Republican members of the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. The action, according to reports from the capital, was considered an expression of disapproval on the part of rebellious members of the shipping committee who feel that the committee is not moving fast enough. The committee chairman is Alvin F. Weichel of Ohio.
Senator Warren G. Magnuson, Democrat of Washington, announced yesterday that he was seeking legislation “to protect privately operated American shipping services from unwarranted and destructive competition” by the Military Sea Transportation Service. He made known that he had introduced a measure earlier in the week that would require the armed services to use private shipping except in extraordinary circumstances.
The agency is operating more than 200 of its own vessels, including large tankers, cargo ships and passenger vessels, and more than 100 carriers that are being operated for the agency by the National Shipping Authority Mr. Magnuson said.
Navy To Use Nickel-Cadmium Batteries
Aviation Week, March 30, 1953.—Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics has placed a million dollar order for 2,000 nickel-cadmium aircraft batteries with a French firm. The order signals the start of a trend away from conventional lead-acid battery for military aircraft, BuAer electronics officials claim.
BuAer, agency responsible for development of all military aircraft batteries, expects by June to receive its first shipment of nickel-cadmium batteries from the Societe Accumulateurs Fixes et de Traction (SAFT) French battery firm of Romainville, France.
Navy officers expect that in the next two years the nickel-cadmium battery will replace lead-acid batteries in all military aircraft. By that time, an American manufacturer will be producing the French battery. Negotiations with several American manufacturers are at an advanced stage, BuAer reports, until an American firm begins producing the new battery, both types will be used interchangeably in military aircraft.
Air Force probably will adopt nickel-cadmium batteries for its aircraft within the next fiscal year.
Strongest Link
Until now, the lead-acid battery has been the weakest part of an aircraft’s electrical system, according to Marine Col. E. C. Best, director of BuAer’s electronics division. The best lead-acid batteries are not serviceable beyond 100 hr. Therefore, it has been standard operating procedure for the military to buy three lead-acid batteries for each unit which they have installed.
There is a strong possibility, BuAer claimed, that the nickel-cadmium battery will last for the life of the airplane.
If so, it would become the strongest point in the aircraft’s electrical system rather than the weakest, according to BuAer experts.
Decision to buy the French battery came after 15 months of intensive tests by the Bureau of Standards and in operational aircraft at the Navy’s test station at Patuxent, Md. Nickel-cadmium batteries met all the Navy’s specifications and, in some phases, exceeded all expectations.
Big advantage of the nickel-cadmium battery is that both the nickel and cadmium metals used in the 22-cell battery are 100% recoverable as salvage. BuAer officials claim that percentage of available supply of both these critical metals actually is less than the percentage of lead and rubber used in the lead-acid battery.
BuAer expects that nickel-cadmium batteries will be available commercially in a few years.
Pension Disparity Between Regulars and Reserves Cited
New York Times, March 26, 1953.—The disparity between pension and disability payments made to dependents of Reserve officers and enlisted men who die in military service, and those made to families of Regular and National Guard officers and enlisted men killed in service, was denounced yesterday by Herbert L. Brickman, director of the New York City Veterans Center, 500 Park Avenue.
Because Federal payments to surviving dependents of Reservists and others are disbursed under separate laws, the difference in pensions is considerable, Mr. Brickman said. He gave this as an illustration:
Two Army captains, each with a wife and two children, and each receiving pay and allowances totaling $600 a month, are killed in Korea. But one of the officers is a reservist, the other a National Guard or Regular Army man.
Pension payments to the family of the Regular are made by the Veterans Administration under Federal laws governing that organization. They are $75 a month to the widow, $25 to each of the children—a total of $125 a month.
But those to the Reservist’s family are made by the United States Department of Labor under the Federal Employes Compensation Act of 1916. They are calculated at 45 per cent of the captain’s pay and allowances for the widow and an additional 15 per cent for each of the children, totaling 75 per cent of the officer’s earnings, or $450 a month This is $325 a month more than the family of the Regular—or of the National Guard officer—receives.
Earnings Are a Factor
The difference, Mr. Brickman said, would vary with the earnings of a reservist, for pensions to dependent survivors of generals and privates are alike under the Veterans Administration set-up.
Mr. Brickman said that disability pensions to veterans also varied, according to the veterans’ status as a reservist or a Regular in the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine Corps. He estimated that the reservists’ benefits are three or four times as great as those paid to others by the Federal Government.
Col. Christopher S. Phelan, director of personnel and administration for the New York National Guard, said that organization long had been painfully aware of the distinction in benefits. He said it was a handicap to the National Guard in recruiting.
Mr. Brickman urged that the Government raise the payments for Regulars and others in the Armed Services to the level of those made to the reservists.
OTHER COUNTRIES
Notes on Russia's Naval Program
Intelligence Digest, April, 1953.—The following are brief extracts from Intelligence Digest reports on the Soviet Union’s naval program and development:
January, 1951:
“Our latest reports of submarine construction show that the number of newly commissioned German types has now risen to 367 exactly. . . . A careful survey of different reports indicates that the probable number in commission by the end of the next year (1952) will be about 510.
“All these new submarines are equipped with launching ramps for guided missiles. . . .
“At least four medium sized aircraft carders are under construction in Baltic navy yards.”
April, 1951:
“Long-range naval warfare . . . is to be carried out mainly by submarines. The difficulty here is lack of skilled crews. Submarine Production has now outrun available manpower of the right kind. Great efforts are being made to recruit German sailors. . . .”
May, 1951:
“A year ago, a few big merchantmen had been specially prepared in Leningrad for the transport of atomic bombs to America. A special place is made at the bottom of these ships to hold the bombs. It is believed that the intention is to explode bombs from a distance, by means of special instruments.”
October, 1951:
“The replacement of Commander of the Soviet Fleet and Soviet Minister for the Navy, Admiral Yumasheff, by Admiral Kusnetsov might mean a greater emphasis on light craft, destroyers, and light cruisers. . . .”
December, 1952:
“Besides pushing the submarine program, there are plans for an increase in surface ships. . . . It is intended to concentrate on smaller aircraft carriers and cruisers, especially the 9,500-10,500-ton improved Kirov type of cruiser. . . . There are indications of a considerable strengthening of the Soviet Marine Corps.”
In The Weekly Review we reported as follows:
January 16, 1953:
“The personnel of the Navy now amounts to about 600,000. It has four battleships; 15 heavy and light cruisers; 48 destroyers; and, about 350 submarines of over 1,000 tons. Very many more under-sea craft are under construction.”
Revival of Officer Caste
Novoye Russkoe Slow, March 15—The process of formation of separate, privileged, and even hereditary social groups in the Soviet Union is most clearly expressed in the army. The decree of 24 July, 1943, indicates that mere deeds of bravery on the field of battle do not give the right to promotion to officer status. One can become a commissioned officer only on completion of the officer candidate schools. The latter are crowded, and the number of vacancies is naturally limited. Since preference is given to sons of officers, such candidates have a virtual monopoly of appointments. A French military specialist writing under the pseudonym “X,” who had the opportunity to observe the Soviet army at close range, stated that the Soviet officer corps is the most privileged in the world (Figaro, 24 Feb., 1951). “The rank of officer,” he writes, “is becoming hereditary and, by design of the Soviet military leaders, officers must live in an exclusively military atmosphere, removed as far as possible from civilian influence in order to promote a caste spirit.
“The first military clubs, founded in 1930, were originally destined for both officers and enlisted personnel; now the latter are excluded. Moreover, officers of the various ranks have separate tables and clubs. . . . In the cadet corps and military schools, training in dancing and “good manners” is compulsory. The appearance of the new caste spirit has led to domestic complications, inasmuch as a great number of young officers became convinced that their wives were of excessively humble social origin and lacked the proper education in manners and culture demanded by their new social obligations. There was a flood of divorces among the military, and for social considerations officers are now seeking wives from the old bourgeoisie and even from the aristocracy.
“But Soviet officers are no exception in this regard, and all the newly privileged people are obviously trying to forget their social origin, and at least on the surface copy the pre-revolutionary society. Neither the literature, the theater, nor the movies show the life of the new “bourgeoisie,” and officially it does not exist, though from time to time in the Soviet press there are threatening articles unmasking the “bourgeois” tendencies penetrating even the very center of the army.”
Real Objective of Soviet Peace Aims
New York Times, April 16, 1953.—The real objective of the latest Soviet “peace offensive,” for which Moscow is apparently willing to pay a price in tactical concessions elsewhere, is beginning to emerge in the latest Soviet moves in Europe. This objective, hidden behind an ostensible drive for German unification and neutralization, is a reversal of the growing unification of Western Europe as manifested in the European Coal and Steel Community, the projected European Defense Community and the proposed European Parliament, and a renewed disintegration of the Continent into separate and potentially hostile states unable to stand on their own feet politically, economically or militarily.
Should such disintegration take place again, there would be little to stop the Kremlin from extending its domination over the whole Continent, and that would put at Russia’s disposal a war potential which would make it not merely equal but actually superior to the United States.
The new Soviet drive along these lines began in March, shortly after the decisive lower house of the West German Parliament had ratified the new European treaty system, when General Chuikov, Soviet commander in East Germany, issued a letter urging a four-Power conference to prepare a German peace treaty and to create a “united, independent, democratic and peace-loving German state.” At the same time General Chuikov began to clear the atmosphere for such a conference by arranging a four-Power meeting to discuss air safety over Germany to avert further air incidents.
Now this first bid has been followed up by Walter Ulbricht, Deputy Premier and real “boss” of Eastern Germany, but also a Red Army colonel and the Kremlin’s German spokesman, who in the name of Soviet Russia and in the official Soviet newspaper has renewed the call for a full dress four-Power conference on Germany and demands that the United States show its readiness to accept. Further moves in the same direction will undoubtedly follow, and General Chuikov is already reported under orders to draft new unification proposals for Germany.
Mr. Ulbricht declares that the Soviets have paved the way for such a conference by “supporting” the Chinese and North Korean overtures for ending the Korean war. If the end of that war can be achieved thereby, the West might well take advantage of the Kremlin’s willingness to make concessions on what it might now regard as minor issues, and we might even press for more, especially in the matter of the Austrian treaty, and in respect to the new Communist aggression against Laos. It is even possible that the Soviets might now be willing to make far greater concessions on Germany, even in the matter of free elections on which the West insists, in order to further their aims.
But Mr. Ulbricht leaves no doubt as to what these aims are. The first big objective, he says, is to kill off West Germany’s “illegal” treaties of military and political alliance with the Western Powers, which means the Schuman Plan and the European Army pact calling for a German contribution to it. This would also mean the collapse of all further European unification moves and would open the way for a Soviet conquest of the Continent without the Soviets firing a shot.
It would be folly to underestimate the impact of the Soviet move. Unification has a powerful appeal to all Germans, and some, like the Socialists, are willing to pursue it on almost any terms.
Russian Satellites Show Degrees of Unrest
New York Times, March 22, 1953.—The death of Joseph Stalin, followed closely by that of President Klement Gottwald of Czechoslovakia, his principal lieutenant in the satellites, caught the “people’s democracies” of the East bloc in a state of near crisis. With Moscow’s pistol at their backs, the regimes of Czechoslovakia and Hungary in particular were beginning to flounder in the mess and muddle inseparable from their attempt to impose economic communism almost overnight.
Given time, and left to apply their own local knowledge, there seemed no reason why the regimes might not manage it. But Moscow has seemed to insist that not only the success but the demonstrated failures of the long and agonizing Russian Communistic experiment must be repeated under totally different conditions in the satellites. Thus the satellite regimes are forced to use methods which may be ritual but are not reasonable. Reasonableness, in fact, appears to be barred as a sinful means for attaining even a good end. Not logic but lies and not teaching but terror must be the modus operandi.
Results in East Europe
What have been the results for the East bloc satellites?
Poland—Rationing was recently abolished, industrial and agricultural prices raised by between 50 and 100 per cent, wages by only 12 to 27.7 per cent. The result has been a substantial drop in the already low Polish standard of living. In the atmosphere of general discontent thus engendered, the regime has begun a persecution campaign against Catholicism like that which has already resulted in Czechoslovakia in the creation of a pseudo-Catholic national church.
East Germany—Once the granary of the Reich, East Germany also is in the throes of a food crisis. There, as in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, a purge with strong anti-Semitic flavor has begun.
Czechoslovakia—This satellite has been going through political as well as economic convulsions. The purge of Communist leader Rudolf Slansky last year was the bloodiest and most extensive yet carried out in a “people’s democracy.” Transportation and heavy industry have experienced serious setbacks as a result of the coal shortage which halted trains on their tracks and forced factories to let their furnaces cool. Following a failure in the supply and distribution of food, Czechoslovakia went heavily down the same road as Poland by restricting rationed commodities to workers in essential industries and leaving others to the mercy of an expensive free market.
Situation in Hungary
Hungary—Last year’s crop failure is making itself felt in a catastrophic lack of flour, bread, potatoes and milk. Since the farmers have been forced to surrender all they produced, this is worse in the country than in the cities, and scores of kulaks (larger landholders) have already been arrested in Budapest for buying large quantities of food to take home to keep themselves and their livestock alive. As a result of lagging mechanization Vice Premier Ernoe Geroe told a recent congress of trade unionists that Hungary must this year produce 24 per cent more coal, 44 per cent more pig iron and 20 per cent more steel to make up arrears. A low-level purge of Jewish Communists is being carried out.
Rumania—This once fruitful country has also been plagued by food shortages, partly a result of bad crops, partly caused by a breakdown of city-country food exchange. Higher industrial norms are being imposed to accelerate mechanization.
Bulgaria—Labor has been frozen to its jobs by a new law imposing imprisonment up to one year for leaving them. A still more draconic measure has made attempt to escape from the country a capital offense, with lesser punishment for families of fugitives. Communist organs admitted that the campaign for “Socialist competition” in industry had brought “appalling results” and the Sofia radio admitted that the population was complaining of the inferior quality of goods forced on it.
Lack of Consumer Goods
Inferior quality—the percentage of rejects would give any capitalist technician apoplexy—plus paper fulfillment but actual failure of state plans (achieved by substitution of items easily manufactured for essential items) and an intolerable lack of such consumer articles as diapers, soap, writing paper, razor blades and household wares have dogged Communist performance in every satellite. A more wasteful weakness has been the lack of provision for repairs.
All this has caused cumulative exasperation among the people who, unlike the Russians, have been used to better things. It has expressed itself in passive resistance, which is the most difficult sort for the Communist regime to overcome and—to judge from a statement by Deputy Premier Karol Bacilek that his secret police were now supervising Czechoslovak factories—in actual sabotage.
This is the situation which Premier Georgi M. Malenkov inherits from Stalin. Since he has never seen a Western country it will probably be even more difficult for him to understand why terror should not overcome all difficulties in the satellites as it has in Russia. What effect the change of regime will have on them it is too soon to say, but that it has made their Communist leaders nervous is obvious from their calls for more “vigilance” and their statements that “we must draw even closer to Russia.”
Now as before, the only East bloc satellites that theoretically might have any choice in this matter, are Czechoslovakia and Albania, since in all others the Soviet Army is on the spot to quell any Titoist revolt. If there should be any signs of such unrest in Czechoslovakia, however, it is practically certain the Soviet garrison would be “invited” to take up residence there.
Foreign Broadcasts Heard
The situation offers a ripe field for Western propaganda. Unfortunately, it coincides with a period when the United States propaganda organization is under fire. Whether or not its methods could be improved, the violent reaction of the regimes of the “people’s democracies” to its efforts indicates that they must have substantial effect. The Albanian Government, for instance, decreed in January that listening to foreign radio stations broadcasting in Albanian was banned on penalties of imprisonment for from five to twenty years and confiscation of all property.
No other satellite has too strict a prohibition. Theoretically, listening to foreign broadcasts is not in itself an offense if they are not repeated to others, but in practice those caught listening are made to suffer.
By warning citizens of Iron Curtain countries of an impending change in currencies, Western broadcasting stations have on three separate occasions caused buying panics.
Escapees to the West have testified that Communists as well as non-Communists are in the habit of listening to Western programs and have estimated that 80 per cent of the population of Czechoslovakia and Hungary who have radios make this their practice. To counter it in all the satellites, but particularly in Rumania, loud-speakers which can be fed from a central broadcasting system are being substituted for individual radio sets.
Russia Held Able To Mobilize Fully
New York Times, April 3.—Soviet Russia can now provide the economic support required for a full mobilization, Col. James E. Reilly of the Air Force declared here yesterday.
Colonel Reilly addressed 400 military and civilian members of the Economic Mobilization Course, being given at the Astor Hotel, and an equal number of guests invited to hear the two-hour lecture on Russia. The Air Force officer is the senior member of a six-man team of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, which gives the two-week course.
“It is extremely difficult to estimate the strength and weakness of Russia’s war potential,” Colonel Reilly said, “because there are so many facets to the Russian economy. However, I believe that future history will show many miscalculations, either in the form of gross overestimates of Russian strength, or underestimates of that country’s capacity for war.
“On the best available information, Russia can now support full mobilization. Since 1920, war plans have been made from top to bottom of the Russian governmental structure. Wartime controls are functioning, war plans are complete and detailed plans have been made to convert Russian plants to war production.”
Bureaucracy a Weakness
As inherent weaknesses in Russia, Colonel Reilly cited the “huge bureaucracy” required to operate the Government and its Communist party counterpart, and the task of rebuilding areas devastated in World War II. The latter task, he said, was now virtually completed. Though the Soviet Union lost 20,000,000 persons in the last war, he said that loss had been overcome by new population and satellite strength.
“Today Russia’s population stands at 212,000,000,” the Colonel explained, “with an estimate of 225,000,000 by 1960 and 25,000,000 by 1970. United States population is estimated at 175,000,000 by 1970. Russia has the largest manpower reserves of any industrial nation, with many millions in the military age bracket.”
Soviet airplane production was reported at 19,000 airplanes in 1950, the speaker said. He quoted present estimates of Soviet air strength as 20,000 combat planes and an equal number in reserve, formed into eighteen air armies. These aircraft, he added, were integrated with an army estimated at 175 divisions.
Goal or 1,000 Submarines
In sea power Colonel Reilly told the conferees that Russia had 354 submarines, 120 under construction and a goal of 1,000. The country’s natural resources, he said, were virtually unlimited because relatively little development had taken place. While technological progress aided Soviet military strength, he said the general backwardness of a country that was half agricultural detracted from its war potential.
During the morning Capt. Terrell A. Nisewaner, United States Navy, told the conferees that genuine unification of Western Europe might cut the American tax burden by permitting withdrawal of American troops from the western countries. In the last five years, he said, substantial progress had been made toward unification.
“But we have much farther to go,” he added.
The two-week course will end today with a luncheon at the Astor at which Bernard M. Baruch will be a speaker.
Italy: Soviets Order Vessels from Italy
La Revue Maritime, March, 1953.—Negotiations are under way between the Soviet commercial delegation and the Pietro Ligure yards for the order of six 2,200-ton motor ships to be built for the U.S.S.R.
Swedish Data on the Soviet Navy
La Revue Maritime, March, 1953.—In its latest edition, the Swedish annual Marine-kalender gives interesting data on some new Soviet units.
Three diagrams are particularly noteworthy: one depicting the Tchapayev class of cruisers, and the two others showing 2 destroyers of recent type.
The Tchapayev class cruisers entered service in 1950-1951. They are assigned as follows:
Arctic: Tchapayev, Jhelezniakov
Baltic: Tchkalov
Black Sea: Frunze, Kuibishev
They have the following characteristics:
Displacement—10,000 tons
Length—200 meters
Width—21 meters
Draught—6.4 meters
Armament—12/152 mm. Guns (4 triple mounts); 8/100 mm. Guns (4 double mounts) 28/37 mm. AA guns; 100 mines.
The general silhouette of Tchapayev is similar to that of the big pre-war Italian cruisers of the Zara class.
Apparently the Soviet engineers were influenced by these rather remarkable Italian vessels.
According to the Swedish authority, 8 cruisers of the Sverdlov class, similar to the Tchapayev, are under construction, 5 are reported on the ways in the great Leningrad arsenals, 1 at Molotovsk in the White Sea, and 2 others in the Far East in the yards of Komsomolsk on the Amur.
This information is in part confirmed by a recent note in the Daily Telegraph mentioning the appearance of 2 Soviet heavy cruisers of the Sverdlov class on manoeuvres in the Baltic. The new vessels are reported as displacing 15,000 tons, which would make them larger than the Tchapayev. According to the Daily Telegraph, 6 other cruisers of this type are under construction in the Baltic. It is apparently quite difficult to get an exact idea of the Soviet construction programs, since few official data are available. It does seem, however, that the Soviets are making a considerable effort toward the construction of all categories except aircraft carriers. Certainly, a large number of submarines is under construction, and at least 12 destroyers are on the ways in the Baltic and 4 in the Arctic. Characteristics of the new units are reported to be:
Displacement—2,000 tons
Length—118 meters
Armament—4/130 mm. guns (2 double mounts); 2/76 mm. guns; 7/37 mm. guns; 8/533 torpedo tubes.
Sweden Blasting To Build Vast Atomic Bomb Shelters
Baltimore Sun, April 5, 1953.—Stockholm.—Sweden is blasting deep into its rock mountains to build a vast system of atomic bomb-proof fortifications that will shelter everything vital to the defense of the country.
Lifting for the first time the secrecy on 10-year-old “Operation Granite,” defense officials said that it provides for 150 giant rock shelters for 800,000 persons, including the world’s largest such cavern in Stockholm.
Work also is well under way on plans to put the nation’s key industries and virtually all the Swedish Air Force and Navy inside mountains.
Despite its determination to maintain its traditional neutral role in the East-West cold war, the nation is fortifying aginst a possible attack by its neighbor Russia.
Stockholm Shelter
The Stockholm bomb shelter cuts through mountain in the heart of the city and is designed to give 20,000 persons complete protection against a direct hit by an atomic bomb. The three-story underground structure is expected to cost 13 million crowns ($2,600,000) when completed next year.
Other giant rock shelters are being built or have been completed in about 25 big Swedish towns.
Officials disclosed that a vital part of the Swedish Navy already can dock in “numerous” secret harbors gouged from mountains along Sweden’s Baltic coast. Space also has been blasted for naval yards in the solid rock.
Mountain Hangars
Most of the nation’s jet fighter bases have mountain hangars now. It is planned to base vitually the entire Air Force of 1,500 planes underground.
Other buried installations include aircraft, tank and munitions factories; hospitals, power plants, laboratories, fire stations, and storage depots.
Sweden first started to go underground before 1900, when it built the subterranean Boden Fortress to protect its northern land border against Russia. That project and the others have been pushed without interruption since World War II.
INTERNATIONAL
Revised International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, To Be Placed in Effect
Pilot Chart, North Atlantic Ocean, May 1953.—The revised International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea will come into force on January 1, 1954. These Regulations were agreed upon among the delegates to the International Safety of Life at Sea Conference held in London in 1948. They are circulated to all interested governments by the Government of the United Kingdom, acting at the invitation of the other participating governments. When substantial unanimity of acceptance had been reached the Government of the United Kingdom was to notify all other governments of that fact, setting an effective date not less than 1 year ahead. The United States is now in receipt of formal notification that substantial unanimity has been reached and that the date of January 1, 1954, has been decided upon as the effective date for the new Regulations.
Among the more important changes introduced by the 1948 Regulations are the following:
- The Regulations apply to seaplanes on the water as well as to water craft.
- The second white masthead light which is allowed by the existing Regulations becomes compulsory except for vessels less than 150 feet in length and for vessels engaged in towing.
- The range of visibility of lights on fishing vessels is standardized at 2 miles. In the existing Regulations no range is specified.
- The stern light which is allowed by the existing Regulations becomes compulsory and its range of visibility is increased from 1 to 2 miles.
- The range of visibility of anchor lights is increased for all vessels under 150 feet in length from 1 to 2 miles and for vessels over that length from 1 to 3 miles.
- When a power-driven vessel which, under the Regulations, is to keep course and speed, is in sight of another vessel and is in doubt whether the other vessel is taking sufficient action to avert collision, she may use a signal consisting of five short blasts.
British Views on Hong Kong and China Trade
Christian Science Monitor, March 24, 1953.—Anthony Eden, speaking for Britain to the American people before the New York Foreign Policy Association, put his finger on the crux of the issue between his country and America when he made the following statement:
“Today, owing to the effective embargo on shipments of strategic goods to China, Hong Kong cannot play its normal economic role. That is accepted, as I am sure you will also accept the fact that Hong Kong must live,”
The question at issue is whether the American people actually will accept the Eden postulate “that Hong Kong must live.”
The British case is based on the distinction which the British Government draws between the impropriety of shipment to China of goods classed by the United Nations as strategic materials and the continued propriety of trade with Communist China in other categories of goods.
The United States Government does not draw this line of distinction. It bans any American trade with Communist China, although it is the only UN country which has taken this drastic step. Others continue to ship goods which by UN definition are nonstrategic.
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There are deep and compelling economic reasons behind the difference between the American and the British approach to the problem. The United States is not seriously dependent on trade with China. It can live and prosper and keep its arsenals going without trade with China.
Britain is not in such an independent condition. Hong Kong is a crown colony and in times past also a major economic asset to the home country. Britain is proud of the colony it built, to quote Mr. Eden, “by British enterprise from an uninhabited island,” It hopes, understandably, to retain that economic asset. It needs to keep it for practical as well as sentimental reasons. Britain lives by overseas trade, and the China trade is part of the economic life stream which keeps Britain’s factories running and its workmen fed. The end of all trade between Britain and China would hurt Britain as seriously as it would hurt China, perhaps even more.
These differences of approach to the question of China trade produce different estimates of the importance of the nonstrategic trade which still flows through Hong Kong. The British estimate that 80 per cent of all war materials reaching the Communist armies in Korea come overland from Russia. They estimate that another 15 per cent comes from countries which Britain cannot control or influence except indirectly. It estimates at only 5 per cent the war materials which have been reaching North Korea through loopholes in the British system. This 5 per cent moved, according to British figures, by shipping which is actually British owned although it operates under foreign registries such as Panamanian and Greek. The British point out that some American ships under Panamanian registry still trade with China.
The measures which Mr. Eden announced to Washington on his visit are expected to more than plug this 5 per cent loophole. The licensing system should stop all strategic trade by means of disguised British ships. More than that it should reduce materially the flow of war goods even by ships belonging to Russian satellites. Extracurricular British methods did in fact prevent the passing beyond Singapore of the Finnish tanker loaded with Romanian oil.
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But American estimates of the proportion of war-useful goods reaching China from overseas differ from the British, primarily because Washington classifies more things as being strategic than do Britain and the UN. According to Washington sources, scarcely 50 per cent of the needs of the Communist armies in Korea are met by land sources.
Probably in the background of the American attitude is also a residue of the old assumption inherited from the missionary days that Hong Kong represents “exploitation” of natives by white men and is therefore to be presumed bad. Certainly there is no emotional assumption “that Hong Kong must live” in the American bosom.
In effect the British have said, grant us the right of Hong Kong to live in return for our efforts to plug all loopholes for UN-defined strategic materials. In effect Washington, possessing no emotional or practical interest in the survival of Hong Kong, presses toward measures which probably would destroy it. Washington accepts the theory of “trade not aid,” but when the trade is with Communist China there is strong disapproval even though the trade is classified as nonstrategic by all other countries.
SCIENCE
Men in Submarine End 60-Day Trial
New York Times, March 20, 1953.— Twenty-three volunteers, who have been sealed in the hull of the fleet submarine Haddock since Jan. 19, in an effort to help Navy scientists find out how much carbon dioxide can be tolerated, climbed out of the Haddock today, their test mission successfully completed. For two months they have lived in a machine-controlled atmosphere in which the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide was regulated by electronic devices.
The volunteers seemed to be wearied by their trial. Limited questioning of the men was allowed by Navy officers and the test subjects reported they had found the two months tiresome, but not difficult. Veteran submariners here pointed out that under actual war conditions fleet-type submarines have made war patrols under far more trying circumstances for periods as long as eighty days.
The test was to determine an important design element for the world’s first atomic submarines, which may be launched within a year.
Normally, a man breathes in oxygen then exhales carbon dioxide at the rate of about 350 cubic centimeters (a third of a quart) a minute. This process is the opposite of the chemical process that takes place in growing plants. The carbon dioxide waste, if it accumulates in the respiratory atmosphere, can choke a man. The maximum tolerable carbon dioxide level, discovered in the test here, has not been revealed. It is somewhere between a concentration of between 0.2 and 0.4 per cent, normal in a city, and 3.0 per cent, which is a deadly concentration.
Vital to Atom Submarines
The secret finding is vital in the design of the atom-driven submarine. Such a submarine, with underseas refueling, might stay submerged until her hull rusted through. Her crew cannot. The atom vessel has available electricity to make breathable oxygen from sea water and carbon dioxide can be removed electrically. But to remove all the carbon dioxide would require so great a bulk of conditioning machinery that there would not be room left in the hull for crew and armaments. The maximum amount that can be safely left is the secret finding of the New London test.
According to Comdr. Gerald J. Duffner, officer in charge of the Naval Medical Research Laboratory here, the test had no deleterious effects on the Haddock crew. The volunteers will rest for ten days, then they will undergo exhaustive tests to assure that their prolonged exposure to carbon dioxide did not harm them.
The crewmen came out of the submarine’s forward battery hatch, a stainless steel tube set flush into the sea deck of the Haddock, tied to a barge at the base. Roy E. Lanphear, Torpedoman’s Mate, 1st Class, led the way. He blinked at the gray sky, shivered slightly in the afternoon’s rain, and posed blinking for photographers.
Crew Happy to End Trial
The other men followed. Last was Lieut. Cmdr. Ralph Faucett, a physician-volunteer. The volunteers were wan. They faced the sky for the first time in two months with a built-in submariner’s stoicism. They were happy to have the trial over, they said. But they exhibited none of the joyousness that is usually associated with the start of a period of shore leave after a spell at sea.
They described briefly the games and the entertainments and the scientific tests with which they had been busy. But Torpedoman Lanphear sounded the keynote. He is a veteran of eight patrols on the submarine Finback during World War II.
“After all,” he said, “this was a pretty easy test. We always knew that the fellows topside were on our side and they they were not trying to destroy us. It’s different in war.”
The design of the first atom submarine will require atom-age submariners. In their tests here, for instance, the volunteers developed a taste for cottage cheese. This is not a significant finding for future submariners, however, because there is no supply of cottage cheese available to a submarine on war patrol in the middle of the oceans. Something else will have to do.
Need for Basic Research Told at Scientific Meeting
San Francisco Chronicle, March 28, 1953.—Los Angeles.—Uncle Sam is spending about one and a quarter billion dollars a year on research and he is not getting his money’s worth.
This is perhaps the most significant statement that came out of the 123rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society. It was made by Dr. L. A. DuBridge, president of the California Institute of Technology. To what extent he is right is a matter on which there are many opinions. But the fact that Dr DuBridge found reason to say it was a sort of keynote to the meetings.
Nearly 5,000 chemists had come together here. Dr. DuBridge was reminding them how natural science has mushroomed during recent years and how it is more and more influencing the daily lives of each individual citizen.
The federal government is spending 17 times as much for natural scientific research and development as it did in 1940. That is 40 per cent of the three billion dollars spent for all research in the country. The military’s share of this is 40 times as large as it was a little over a decade ago.
Techniques Lag
It has grown so quickly that administrative techniques have not kept pace, Dr. DuBridge said. He was not surprised that the over-all efficiency of the research program is low. Also, he said he thought the emphasis given to development, especially along military lines, as opposed to basic natural science, was a dangerous trend. The development of gadgets depends upon the more fundamental work and eventually will dry up if this latter is neglected, he said.
As one way of tackling the problem, he suggested that more money be directed toward basic natural science and, wherever possible, research should be handled under civilian management contracts. The government would own the facilities, but they would be run by contractors. Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, the atom bomb laboratory, is run that way by the University of California and is highly successful.
He indicated the success of this type of laboratory lies in the fact that it is under neither military nor civil service control. He was not criticizing these agencies, but pointing out that research goes ahead better when directed by experienced natural scientists who are free from governmental red tape.
He declared, too, that there is need for more adequate natural scientific advice in top government circles. The present impact of natural science on both national and international affairs has come so suddenly that so far there is no satisfactory way of taking this into account in laying grand strategy or making policy decisions.
Three Steps Proposed
Dr. DuBridge recommended three initial steps to correct this.
First, the Secretary of Defense should appoint a top-flight natural scientist or engineer as adviser to his department with funds and a special staff to get whatever information he needed. This man also should be chairman of the Research and Development Board.
Second, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission should be a member or alternate member of the National Security Council.
Third, this council should appoint an advisory committee with a full-time expert chairman.
Dr. DuBridge did not think that these were the best or only solutions. “ . . . I want to point out that even though my suggestions are inadequate . . . it is high time somebody tried to do something in this area.”